Shootings Test Limits of New Self-Defense Law

PASADENA, Tex. — Joe Horn’s home was his castle, but what about his neighbor’s home?

When Mr. Horn, a 61-year-old retiree living with his daughter and her family in a growing subdivision in this Houston suburb, saw two burglars breaking into the house next door on Nov. 14, he called 911 and grabbed his shotgun.

Moments later, after what the police say was a confrontation on Mr. Horn’s front lawn, the two men — both illegal immigrants — lay dead on winding Timberline Drive, leaving behind a pillowcase stuffed with jewelry and about $2,000 in cash.

One of them, identified by the police as Hernando Torres, a k a Miguel Antonio DeJesus, 38, was found across the street beside a sleigh and a Santa cow with a sign, “Have a Moo-ry Christmas,” at the house of a Pasadena police officer.

The other, Diego Ortiz, 30, fell on a neighbor’s lawn. Bloodstains were still visible on the sidewalk Tuesday. “The fire department did some pressure washing, but you can still see where he was,” said the neighbor, who did not want her name used. “You don’t know who is tied to them, who may still retaliate.”

“There’s the First Amendment,” said Charles Lamont, a neighbor and a marine captain who served in Iraq, citing the protests for and against Mr. Horn that have convulsed the neighborhood. The Pasadena City Council on Tuesday gave preliminary approval to a ban on demonstrations at private residences.

Then there was Mr. Horn’s claim of self-defense under the Legislature’s reformulation of the “castle doctrine” that, as of September, no longer requires a Texan to retreat before using deadly force at his own “habitation” in the face of a perceived lethal threat. Protecting a neighbor’s property, however, is not included.

Protesters have also made race an issue. Mr. Horn is white and the burglars, he told the 911 operator, were black. Yet the neighbors whose house Mr. Horn was protecting are Vietnamese. They later said they thought the two men had been stalking them.

A police report suggests Mr. Torres and Mr. Ortiz may have been shot in the back.

And both, the police say, were illegal immigrants from Colombia, Mr. Ortiz having been deported in 1999 after being sentenced to 25 years for cocaine convictions.

Mr. Horn went into seclusion even before a death threat was left on an answering machine Sunday in the Harris County district attorney’s office. He has been too upset to comment, said his lawyer, Charles T. Lambright.

Capt. Bud Corbett, a spokesman for the Pasadena Police Department, said that Mr. Horn had cooperated with the investigation and that the police report would be ready for the district attorney by the end of next week. Then, Captain Corbett said, a grand jury will decide whether Mr. Horn will face homicide charges.

The shootings were denounced by scores of black demonstrators including Quanell X, the leader of the Houston-based New Black Panther Nation, who led a march on Dec. 2. He denounced Mr. Horn as “judge, jury and executioner” amid scuffles with white biker counter-protesters.

One vital piece of evidence is certain to be the audiotape of Mr. Horn’s 911 calls. In a low, calm and steady voice, he said he saw the men breaking in and asked: “I’ve got a shotgun; do you want me to stop them?”

The operator told him not to go out with a gun because officers would be arriving.

“O.K.,” Mr. Horn said. “But I have a right to protect myself too, sir,” adding, “The laws have been changed in this country since September the first, and you know it.”

The operator said, “You’re going to get yourself shot.” But Mr. Horn replied, “You want to make a bet? I’m going to kill them.”

Moments later he said, “Well here it goes, buddy. You hear the shotgun clicking and I’m going.”

Then he said: “Move, you’re dead.”

There were two quick explosions, then a third, and the 911 call ended.

“I had no choice,” Mr. Horn said when he called 911 back. “They came in the front yard with me, man.”

Captain Corbett said that a plainclothes officer had pulled up just in time to see Mr. Horn pointing his shotgun at both men across his front yard, that Mr. Ortiz had at one point started to run in a way that took him closer to Mr. Horn, and that both men “received gunfire from the rear.”

That fact, alone, however, was not necessarily conclusive, Captain Corbett said. “It tells an investigator something, but not everything,” he added. “They could still have been seen as a threat.”

Correction: December 14, 2007

The Pasadena Journal article on Wednesday, about a Texas homeowner, Joe Horn, who killed two men breaking into a house next door, misstated the surname of Mr. Horn’s lawyer. He is Charles T. Lambright, not Lambrecht.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A32 of the New York edition with the headline: Fatal Shootings Test Limits of New Self-Defense Law in Texas. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe